I love riding my bike. It's the joy of running, without running's joint pain. I make a point of commuting by bike even in winter. There were three occasions when I didn't ride, when it was storming so badly I decided it was excessively dangerous.

In the summer, I've been biking for fun and fitness. Most of those rides are with my girlfriend, centering around her place. Why her place rather than mine? Because she's got a house while I've got an apartment, so the ride endpoint is much comfier.

Once in a while I do some riding solo. One reason I enjoy it is that my GF and I are at different fitness levels. She didn't hold a job for six years where physical fitness was a non-metaphorical matter of life and death. But when I go alone, I push the pace much harder, enough to get my heart into the aerobic zone.

So last week I rode across campus, then I noticed a bike trail that I'd been previously unaware of. It was glorious! It led through a mix of forest and grassy floodplain, then paralleled Ellicott Creek which is big enough to count as a river in my book.

Originally going south, the trail ran out into a little park. I followed another cyclist onto a road with a nice shoulder, but the scenery was less interesting. I pulled off into the town highway department's parking lot, did a U-turn between the two barns where they keep the road salt, and jammed on the brakes after seeing something interesting. In the middle of the floor of one of the nearly-empty salt barns was a peregrine falcon, standing on top of a just-killed pigeon. I crept closer. The falcon wasn't happy, but he wasn't willing to relinquish his kill either. I got to about 30 feet away, where I could see clearly but wouldn't drive him off. He must have made the kill just as I arrived, because the dead sky-rat was untouched. After a few minutes of staring at each other in silence, the falcon decided that I was nonthreatening enough to start eating. Nature red in tooth and claw– it was neat watching a falcon eat in the wild. (Well, if you consider the inside of a building "wild". I stared for a good ten minutes while he nibbled delicately, and by "nibbled delicately" I mean "messily ripped off chunks of flesh". The day was wearing on, though, and I wanted to check more of the trail. I headed back north and passed the fork that led back to campus.

After about 8.5 miles of riding, I got passed on the left by a faster cyclist, not for the first time. It was a dude that looked to be well into his retirement, and he zipped by like I was standing still. "This shall not stand!" I declared. (Note: it's more dramatic that way. What I really said was "Ah hell no!") I upshifted, stood in the pedals, and determined that I was going to catch that guy.

I'm proud to say I did. I got up on his rear wheel and hung there for two miles, cruising at 18 mph. Now, 18 mph is not all that fast, really. But this dude was on a Trek Madone, a carbon-fiber race machine that sells for between two and nine thousand dollars. I was on a Jamis Commuter which sold for… quite a bit less. My main problem was that the Commuter has a very upright posture, which is great for seeing traffic, but very unaerodynamic. Also, I use the Commuter 2 which has a seven-speed internally geared hub, while my nemesis had a high-end derailleur. Trek Madone's come standard with either twenty or thirty gears. So he was able to maintain a much more efficient pedaling cadence. It was great excercise for me, though– my heart rate monitor said I hit 98% of my theoretical max heart rate. Which explains why I couldn't maintain it for very long.

It was fun, though. What I was doing is sarcastically called "Cat Six racing". Amateur bike racers in the US are divided into five categories of competitiveness, with Cat One being the best and Cat Five being the sort that finish a race with beer and brats. Cat Six are people like me who get crazy competitive and attack other riders that are just out to get some exercise or commute to work or whatever.

Anyway, here's my route:

And I assume most of you were bored to tears by this long story that doesn't even contain a shaggy dog. Sorry!

And if you've made it this far, remember that Hil and I will be doing a charitable bike ride to benefit the Roswell Park Cancer Research Institute. You can donate to my ride here!

Posted by: Boviate at 03:59 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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